The Girls (Susan)

[Cipher]

If there was one thing Cipher was curious about, it was what it was like to be a teenager. It was why she was here, in 1963 of all the places to be. She wanted to try and be a teenager, just for a little while, maybe try her hand at getting a highschool diploma. A part of her really shined to that idea and had managed to get enrolled in school under the name "Maggie Remington". It seemed correct and right for her, more so than the name Cipher.

Cipher left her last class before lunch, she had been sensing a fellow Time Lord or Lady all day and she was going to find him or her. She needed to speak to them and briefly wondered if she was sensing the Doctor again, she had come across him twice already! Granted he had been in two different Regeneration points, but oh well. Cipher allowed herself to follow her senses and that's when she arrived at a table, one of her...Classmates was it? She had heard whispering from other girls during classes that this was Susan Foreman.

"Hello, do you mind if I sit with you?" Cipher asked curiously. She held a brown paper sack lunch in her hands, mostly because she didn't trust cafeteria food. She had heard horror stories about it, so the ship's food was best for her. "I'm C--Maggie by the way," She offered, happy she stopped herself from introducing herself as Cipher. Though she had gotten the first letter out which wasn't so good.

[Susan Foreman]

Susan Foreman was an anomaly to both teachers and students alike. She was capable of being exceedingly smart and laughably ignorant at the same time. She didn’t hesitate to correct her teachers when they got their information wrong – which, she found, was shockingly often. It was the ‘simple’ things that hung her up. How many shillings were in a pound, references to popular culture, and how humans were meant to react with one another. Her social gaucherie often led her to be the laughing stock of the classroom, but she didn’t care. And that seemed to make her stick out even more amongst the student population of Coal Hill School.

Lunch was always a particularly lonely time for Susan Foreman – not that that was her real name. It was taken from a friend she helped, and the junkyard they’d landed in. Semantics, her grandfather had told her, with a characteristic wave of his hand. And so Susan had stepped forth into the school, bearing a nervous smile and a name from a junkyard.

All in all, she’d been blending in better than she would have initially thought. Sure, none of the boys took much interest in the quiet, ‘nerdy’ girl, but she didn’t bother with that. In fact, she was slightly glad; her grandfather would surely whisk them away from the school. And her teachers were beginning to grow on her, especially her history and science teachers.

She was currently in the process of reading a science book that Ian Chesterton had given to her. She wasn’t exactly thrilled to read it – because what did humans know of physics? – but she’d taken it. And this was why her pen was running out of ink simply from annotating the poor excuse of a textbook and a cold lunch was sitting beside her.

“Hello,” a voice said, disrupting her thoughts. Susan looked up, brown eyes studying the girl with a friendly, puzzled smile on her face. “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

Huh. Well, that was new. This girl looked as though she shouldn’t be hanging out with a girl correcting a textbook, but who was Susan to complain? The young Time Lady pushed the book away from her, gesturing to the seat in front of her. “Feel free.”

“I’m C—Maggie by the way.”

She tilted her head gently at the flub of her name, but Susan shrugged it off. Perhaps she was used to giving a nickname, and had decided against it? “Susan Foreman,” she said, holding out her hand.

[Cipher]

Cipher knew she was too used to introducing herself as Cipher and not enough practice as being Maggie. It wasn't like Maggie was her real name and so she dealt with it regardless. Cipher was rather curious about her classmate and knew she was able to utulize her Time Sense as the text had informed her. Though she was surprised that her classmate wasn't able to sense her at all. Maybe she was also a really young Time Lady too? Cipher did have a habit to try and speed up to what adult Time Lords and Ladies were able to even if Cipher was a Time Tot herself, only ninety-six years old.

Cipher shook the girls hand and for a moment, her mind could see tinelines wrapped around this woman. It seemed Cipher had crossed timelines, but as long as she limited herself, she was certain she wouldn't have much if any impact on the fellow Time Lady's timeline. It wasn't like she effect her life just by meeting her, right? Right... Hopefully, maybe, possibly. At least she could say she hadn't met this woman before in her life, at least this life.

Cipher sat down and smiled and undid her lunch, unsure how to ask the fellow Time Lady all the questions that were entering in mind. Cipher knew nothing about Gallifrey except what she read in books and she didn't want to scare her off either. It was a scary thing to believe that you were the only of your kind, especially when you didn't even know how to get home.

"It's nice to meet you Susan," She told her with a smile. "Is that physics?" Cipher inquired about the book, though her immediately her mind thought about the Gallifreyan physics. 1963 was not a time for advanced Physics, in fact, earth physics was rather elementary. Not something you would expect from a Time Lady as reading material unless you were learning your ABCs.

ooc:
Clothes: www.polyvore.com/cgi/set?id=36364025

[Susan Foreman]

She withdrew her hand quickly, suddenly feeling less friendly to this girl. Susan hadn’t interacted with a great deal of Time Lords besides her grandfather, and she was perfectly content with this fact. She had heard enough about the Time Lords to know that they weren’t the kindest of races. “Nice to meet you,” she said, eyeing the girl with a raised eyebrow. Of course, the jolt she’d gotten could have been just a misplaced jolt of telepathy on her part. Her grandfather had been giving her mental challenges to prevent her mind from stagnating, and, she suspected, to keep her telepathy from becoming too dangerous.

Seeing the girl begin to unpack her lunch, Susan glanced at her untouched meal. She half-heartedly began to poke at the sandwich on her tray. She wasn’t too much of a fan on the school lunches, and even less of a fan for human ‘bologna’. Instead of bothering with the sandwich on the plate, she went straight for the carrots. It was something else that she wasn’t too keen on, but she needed to at least put in an effort to appear normal. And normal teenagers ate carrots. With that, she chomped bravely on a carrot, only slightly wincing from the taste as she forced herself to chew.

Ah, yet another it was better to eat lunch alone. She wasn’t forced to put on appearances.

“Nice to meet you Susan,” the girl sitting across from her said politely. Susan looked up, returning the smile shyly. “Is that physics?” Maggie asked, looking at the book. Susan bit her lip and looked over at the “advanced physics” textbook laying discarded beside the tray of food.

And again, there was no way decent way to answer that. She’d long claimed that she wouldn’t try and dumb herself down to human standards, but sometimes that conflicted awfully with the fact that humans had terribly limited knowledge. “Very elementary physics,” she said truthfully, looking over to Maggie. “There are a few things they got dreadfully wrong, but I’m sure they were just silly errors.”

[Cipher]

“Nice to meet you,” she said, eyeing the girl with a raised eyebrow.

Cipher wasn't sure where the jolt had come from and had briefly divided her attention and saw no one. She knew she had zero control of her own abilities, her being so young after all and no one to teach her. She looked at the meal her fellow Time Lady was eating and it looked, for a word, healthy. Cipher's meal was literally out of this world. It was made up various delicacies across the universe and some that hadn't even been invented yet. "Would you like some of this? I think I brought a little more than I needed." Cipher explained, trying to be nice at least.

Very elementary physics,” she said truthfully, looking over to Maggie. “There are a few things they got dreadfully wrong, but I’m sure they were just silly errors.”

Cipher ate one of her chips (french fries) that had come from her bag, bigger on the inside it seemed, though it really wasn't, it had been a medium bag with lots of little things. "Oh dear, it's going to take them centuries to get it even a quarter right." which was absolutely true. Though to be honest Cipher was only halfway though Advanced Physics, that explained the fifth dimension which so much an abstract to humans even during their twenty-ninth century. "You have to admit they are trying, even though they do have a habit to get things wrong." Her voice was light and rather didn't care if anyone heard her, but honest it wasn't nice to listen into other people's conversations.

Cipher had an odd look in her face as if she was calculating a difficult equation. "Definitely will take them til at least the twenty-ninth century." She said, remembering reading that particular book, it was like learning your 1-2-3s in comparison to what she was learning from the Academy books she had in her library.

"How far have you gotten in your personal lessons in regards to physics?" Cipher inquired, forgetting she was supposed to be appearing to be a 1960s girl with no knowledge of temporal physics or any sort of knowledge that went beyond the mind of a 16-18 year old girl let alone the brightest minds in the world at the moment, as far as humans went.

[Susan Foreman]

Susan looked distastefully down at her carrots, a small smile playing on her lips as she thoughts about human children ‘not eating their vegetables’. “Would you like some of this? I think I brought a little more than I needed,” Maggie offered, pulling out a chip from her bag. Susan glanced between the unappetizing orange devils laying on her tray and the medium-sized bag that Maggie was pulling food out of. She shook her head, shrugging off the food nonchalantly. She hadn’t been terribly hungry anyway. Susan had just felt the need to eat since this Maggie was. But now she wasn’t quite so sure that she had to act ‘human’ around the other teenager.

“Oh dear, it’s going to take them centuries to get it even a quarter right.”

“That’s true,” Susan agreed, leaning on her elbow and looking disconsolately down at the Advanced Physics textbook that Ian had given her. “They are trying, you’re right. If you took space and time out of the equation, they would at least have the basics down,” she said, although she knew that if you took space and time out things would be… well, not much else but a vacuum. “They’re on the right track though. It was embarrassing to learn about what they used to think.”

And it was then that it fully hit the young Time Lady. Her cheeks colored slightly, but other than that, she looked as though she hadn’t faltered a bit. This was obviously not an ordinary ‘alien’. Not the kind that simply hopped between planets. This was someone who could travel in time. Not many other species could do that, save for her own. “Definitely will take them til at least the twenty-ninth century,” Maggie stated. Susan nodded in agreement.

“It’s the same with their history textbooks. They are simply so many things wrong with them,” she said, looking thoughtful. “But the victors are the ones writing the textbooks. It would make sense that the battles would be exaggerated,” she said, chuckling slightly.

“How far have you gotten in your personal lessons in regards to physics?” Maggie asked curiously. Susan frowned and looked around, her cheeks coloring slightly. Her grandfather really wouldn’t approve of this type of conversation. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. If she spoke the truth, and this was just another human pulling her leg, then she and her grandfather could be forced to leave Earth.

“My grandfather is teaching me,” she admitted, looking down at her hands sheepishly. “I’ve nearly gone through his entire library already, but there are still things that I can learn from him that aren’t even in books.” There. That was vague enough. If Maggie was just one of the girls that was trying to trick her, it would appear human – if not a little too geeky – enough.

She leaned across the table slightly, staring intensely into the other girl’s eyes. “Where are you from, Maggie?” she asked quietly.